“Comedy as Catharsis: Navigating Cancer, ADHD, and Autism with Laughter and Love” with Mark Smeets from The ADHD Family Podcast

Dr. Brad Miller 0:00

We have with us our as our guest today, his name is Mark Smeets. And he comes to us from the west coast of Canada. And he is involved with the podcast, which is called We Are The ADHD Family podcast. And we welcome him to cancer comedy. Mark, welcome to our podcast today.

Mark Smeets 0:22

Thank you very much, Brad. Much appreciated. And thanks for having me.

Dr. Brad Miller 0:25

First of all, give us a context. Where do you live? What kind of work do you do? What are you involved with?

Mark Smeets 0:30

Let's start off with I'm in Vancouver, BC up in Canada, and workwise, I was in logistics for about, oh gosh, it was about 14 years and worked for a couple of big companies. And if you ever lost a package with DHL I'm and you talk to me out here, I probably would have been the one to find it or send a warehouse check to go find it. As my kids were born though. I have two of them Owens nine and McKenzie six now, the everything sort of started to shift back around 2014. As things do, and kids are born, it got really hard. And it was trying to manage kids trying to manage it in laws that were sick. And you know, you have people on just on the cancer side of things. I've had people throughout my life pass away either from cancer or something to do with addiction. And it's been you know, it's it's been a tough, I've been to far too many, far too many funerals. And I've had far too many friends in heaven that I don't want. I wish they were here. I left when I left the logistics world, I really have thrown myself into advocacy. And the reason I've done that is because of the struggles that we had with trying to get on his autism diagnosis, and everything else and just trying to be present and handle and manage everything. And that's really a tough thing to do. So that is that's kind of where I am right now. I also do some swim lessons with with an Autism Network that's up here love helping out kids and the whole neuro diverse world that's out there.

Dr. Brad Miller 2:07

Well, you mentioned autism and your son being relatively recently diagnosed with autism. And that's a part of our conversation here today, because we get to your podcast is the ADHD family. So you mentioned about your son and I know you have some other aspects of dealing with this in your family. And it is a it is a malady it is a situation ADHD and autism, which impacts a lot of people just to give a bit of a framework Mark defined for them a little bit, what ADHD is and how it manifests itself in your in your family.

Mark Smeets 2:44

So let's actually How about let's let's rewind a little bit as well, because when you were saying malady, we have to we have to take that word out, because it's not a malady. Part of the problem that you run into, I think in in the world in society is that a lot of the medical system is trying to cure something. And when you look at whether it's the diagnostic manual, or what the purpose of a doctor is, right, they are there to cure something or to heal something or something in that. In that regards. I think the stereotype of when you have someone who has ADHD or autism or Down syndrome, the the a typical stereotype I think has led to a lot of the stereotypes, these definitions, the words that get used. And the opposite really is the case, when I'm teaching swim lessons. For example, in the child's autistic, I just see a child, I don't see someone who's whatever, if someone has to hand flap or with something like that. I just see someone just trying to regulate, maybe that's the first thing to do. And as far as how I figured things out, at least for me, it was really all the process of what my son went through. We originally went on was three he had his speech assessment, and essentially, the speech pathologist thought that he would be on the autism spectrum because of the of how behind he was in the testing and the results when we went for the autism assessment. Because we had a poor assessor. The didn't take the time to really dig into a bunch of things that we had, she gave us an ADHD diagnosis, and we were like, How in the world can you not see half the things that we see? Fast forward five years to nine years old to April 2023. And after pushing and advocating and waiting for the public system to finally catch up to us. We finally got his autism diagnosis. But through that whole process, it led to myself getting my diagnosis for ADHD. My wife and our daughter doesn't have the diagnoses yet but she's gonna land on one of the two we're pretty sure that's the short version to go into What ADHD is, in your brain, you've got two systems, you've got your emotional regulation piece. But you also have what's called your executive functions and your executive functions are the things that allow you to look ahead, organize yourself, talk to yourself, plan things out, problem, solve, strategize. And for me, for me, not necessarily looking ahead, I may just sit there and make a decision all of a sudden, the spur of the moment, and I will have not thought about the consequences. So trust me, there's been plenty of that. That could be an action that you do, that could be something that you say, it's anything like that even for me, the other big effect that has on me is your working memory. And if you think of working memory, like your RAM and a computer, that temporary storage before it's written to the hard drive, the ability for me to remember a bunch of things like No, it's not going to happen, if you looked at my iPhone notes, they probably make you cry, because you could not figure it out. And there's just too much in there. So I always have my phone with me writing those things down. And that's really what ADHD is, it does stand for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, but it's the wrong name. And in the community, a lot of us have been talking about how do you rename this thing?

Dr. Brad Miller 6:22

Teach us a little bit, a little bit about that, because you, you've already helped us understand the malady is not the correct way of looking at this. And now you're saying that, perhaps disorders not the right way of looking at this? What is something for those of us who have to deal with folks who are dealing with this help us to get a handle on on how to understand it or do the proper terminology?

Mark Smeets 6:45

Well, in terms of the proper terminology, really, it's just weaning yourself away from the, I guess, a deficit based language. And by that, I mean is we're not talking about a disorder, we're not talking about a condition, we're just talking about how we are. And if your brain is, you know, when you're born, if you're wired to if you're, if the pathways in your brain are wired to go up this corridor down this corridor over here, and then go here? Well, how different is that from somebody who has to go through a straight line? Now the challenges that come through with like working memory or emotional regulation, and you know, not necessarily blowing up at somebody? Those are those are challenges that I think we pretty much all face? The for us, there's no, there's no stop. And that's the big, that's the big difference with ADHD is that there really is no barrier to say, This is what my action is. Here. This is what my actions are, this is what the consequences going to be. There's nothing in the middle to stop you from saying, is this a good idea? Or am I just going to do it?

Dr. Brad Miller 8:01

Yeah. All right. Well, let's let's go there for a second then mark it in this the ADHD family, you've said a couple things here that indicates there's got to be some story there somewhere. And that is stuff like find yourself in circumstances or consequences about your actions or by something you say or do or your son says or does that may be just considered, you know, a little bit off from what other people are expecting or whatever. You also said something about there was no stop and there's no breaks there's no things like it, has it led you into any weird or uncomfortable or even funny circumstances that you had to deal with?

Mark Smeets 8:43

I guess a classic ADHD problem is sort of the rabbit hole a lot of what gets our brains going is the is the novelty of things. So one thing I got into for example was baking cinnamon buns, and I not that I'm going to be quite good at it but I think I'm pretty good at and they taste pretty good. And I saw this video one day of somebody braiding cinnamon buns and they would roll them up and I was like, Oh, this looks so cool. And I'm like, I wonder if I can do this. And now I've you know learned how to braid cinnamon buns I've learned how to roll them off. And and I'm like I'm having a lot of fun doing this just feels really good. And the the context that's missing is that I am I am the one in our family who does the cooking does the cleaning. Does the baking like it's that's just me, but the you know, here I am have done this for a few months. I've learned the hard way. I even had a co worker that was a chef at one point. And she was giving me baking advice. So here I am asking her questions at stupid hours of the night. And it's like, oh, okay, you you know you do this and you do this and I started to adjust it. And I'm down the rabbit hole.

Dr. Brad Miller 9:58

So you became obsessed about Senator Was that what I'm hearing? You say you just you got? So you got on a roll with rolls? Is that what happened here?

Roll with rolls, but I also got my foodsafe certificate because I thought to myself, I'm gonna open a bakery. Yeah, it's you, you find yourself in situations like that. But you sit there and it's like, what you realize afterwards how do you, you know why this stuff happens and it's like you're just trying to really solve a problem more than anything else.

There is a bit of absurdity to it, you know, it just does things to it, there's just often makes us makes us sometimes do things we would normally do or to react to different things in a way that may not be our pattern and other and other times and you seem like you've had your share, you know, you talk about your own family deal with ADHD and autism. But basically, everybody your family has this. And that's why you do your podcast, we are the ADHD family podcast. But you also have mentioned in other times that you've had a number of people in your life dealing with cancer and other life threatening and even things that took their lives. And for some weird quirk, some of them happened on your birthday. How do you deal with some of that kind of stuff out there, we're kind of on top of what's going on with you, with the family and friends who were dealing with cancer and other things like that.

The it really hit me the most when I think it was when Ron passed away, Ron had, I'm pretty sure it was prostate cancer. And so Ron was a fine, he was a fabulous guy. He was like he was he was an uncle to me, I grew up with him. And my dad plus him, they all work in the same union. And I'm very grateful for for everything that Ron did. But when when he had passed, I known he I knew he was I knew he had cancer, I didn't know too much about it, because I was still young ish when it happened. And I didn't know he passed away on my birthday until maybe a couple of weeks later. And it was just like, what, and obviously, I never forgot him for that. And I never forgot that day. But fast forward years later, after I met my wife, we had another family friend of ours that that Jeremy was 31 passed away from lung cancer and never smoked a day in his life or anything like that. And all of a sudden, it's like stage four, when he's gone in less than a year, and Jared passes, passes on my birthday as well. And what's interesting is that I had a gig to go to that night because I also play bass. And, you know, I been a musician for a long time. And playing that night was just, it was brutal, because I'm upset over this, you're just trying to sort of get through. But every birthday that I that I tend to have, I always use it to just remind I use it to remind myself of a saying that I came up with which is I only have a limited time on this plane of existence. That's it's a profound thing for me to sit there and realize that because I want to make things work, I want people to be good, I want things to be set up for the kids, right and my wife, I want to see other people thrive. And if that means I have to work a little bit harder each day to do that. i That's that's that's fine by me

several circumstances that you and your family have to deal with your deal with your, your your son, and yourself and your wife or your daughter dealing with some form or another ADHD and autism, you have talked about members and your family and in your life who have passed away from cancer, which has had a profound impact on you. But you said you kind of got to work there. What are some of the actions what are some of the works that you do that helps you process stuff, I'm interested in constant the actions that you take now to help you get through these times.

This is where the ADHD does really kick in. And I really learned to embrace all these, you know, crazy out of the box ideas that I do have. And I'll give you a great example is part of my background actually is in computer programming. And so back in the 90s, I was designing websites, hooking databases up to websites before anybody knew what was going on. It was the most fun. Eventually I couldn't make that work because I sucked at running my own business and fell into logistics. But I never lost my technical skills. It came time for Owen and his autism diagnosis. I developed this spreadsheet that it was essentially his whole life, all the different autism traits that we could figure out and made a whole spreadsheet over it chart and everything. And when we went to the last when we went to BC children's I showed the dog I had sent her over to the doctor and the doctor was blown away he thought a staff member did it but turns out there was me. Long story short, I had have been in touch with so many other families because of this spreadsheet because of cases like ours where they were hard to spot, or somebody was, you know, somebody was passed on, we just recently lost my sister in law wasn't cancer, but we just lost my sister in law. Last month, there was a mom that I was helping out with this spreadsheet, here I am, you know, grieving over Kathy. And I'm, you know, we're talking two days later, after Kathy passed about the spreadsheet and helping her get the same thing for her kid that we didn't have. So we don't have to go through it. But again, that spreadsheet wouldn't have happened if I had not let the ADHD rabbit hole, run loose and use everything in my in my arsenal to come up with it,

You use the tools available to you and you created a great tool applied to you personally, but then has not been

the next step is to turn it into an app.

Then that would really be applicable at literally applicable to so many more people. So let's take a little different turn here, Mark, is there anything is there any aspect about everything you're going through of a spiritual nature or a be a kind of metaphysical nature or anything beyond kind of beyond the self that you are dealing with, that you are has helped you or hindered you in this whole process of getting through this? You know you do you're dealing with a lot of stuff here.

there's a saying that I have I know there's a higher power out there that can squash me like a bug. And I chuckled when I sit there and I hear myself say that. But I grew up Catholic, you know, went to church did the whole communion thing, everything else and I always struggled with, with trying to I have faith I have tons of faith I really do. But the to see sort of what goes on with what the church has done in terms of how trans people are treated the whole theory of love the sin, not the sinner, stuff like that, that just kills me to not want to be considered that at all. For me, I have people in my family that are trends that are non binary, and I love them, like they are my family and I will not I'm not turning my back on them for a quote unquote, religion. It's been a struggle, because how do you how do you rectify? How do you are justified but how do you look at what goes on in Earth where you see something that is, you know, sort of being bastardized and manipulated. And then you know, for the sake of quote unquote, history, which has been rewritten God knows how many times by by the elite and the rich, but then you have, you know, what's going on right in front of you. That is my one of my big struggle.

You said you have tons of faith, and you have some real life issues which deals with an organize religion and things of that nature. But it sounds like this faith aspect has been part of the process to help you deal with stuff and that's I'm curious about how it interplays on all these things. The physical nature which is the actions that we take, and the cognitive piece which is how we think through things, and also the spiritual aspect. Dealing with hope and humor, all of this is what help us go though the bad things. Let's talk about things you were now doing to help others. You mentioned about the spreadsheet, that's one thing and the app, how cool is that? But you also created this podcast, why did you create a podcast? Some people might say this is not the right thing to do, you need to focus on your own situation. So why you make this podcast, who is this for?

This all began as a result of what happened one night with the child who is running behind me trying to be very discreet who you can hear in the background.

I love it

Again, when he was three years three or four years old, we didn't have my wife and I did not have a handle on emotional regulation. It really was this older style of parenting of do is I you know just do as I say not do and you know if it wasn't can we put the toy down it was take the toy away. Anyways, he tore apart the house one night I don't know about you, but I I would say your four year old doing an action like that is pretty upsetting. And yeah, and I mean, it was a mill I was in the middle of the kitchen was 1145 at night and I just looked at myself and I happen to have my phone because I've recorded a lot of it on video but I just said I never want another family to go through what we just Did and that right there, that moment of him being in my arms and holding him. And as he was whimpering falling asleep finally just broke me the struggles that we had afterwards of trying to get him his diagnosis and everything that happened within the system within the medical system here, though, that's, that's why that's why I did it. That's the big reason right there. I've always loved talking to people. But I need to respect that I'm more of an introvert and extrovert. So I need to protect that energy. But I do love these kinds of conversations where you can dive in with somebody and get really deep, I just need to recharge afterwards. I want to give people practical tips, not this fluffy advice of read this book. No, it's do this. Try this real life. Yeah, people that's what gives people hope is to hear those things. There's there's enough experts about what causes whatever, whatever, you know, whatever disability we're talking about, but there isn't enough typical side, what's it actually like to be a parent and I'd rather talk to another parent, parent to parent, as opposed to a parent talking to an expert.

So it just a story you just told about your son at age four tearing the house apart. And I can only imagine what that's about, you said it broke you, therefore out of broken pneus you decided to not react by just remaining broken but to kind of put together the broken pieces and to do something with so that's who you're serving. And that was kind of the story. That's kind of the origin story of why you're doing and who you're who you're serving. Have you heard from people where your stories or your spreadsheet or anything else has had some impact on other people?

Yes, big time. The as far as the podcast goes, there was a friend of ours, a really good friend, family friend of ours, that she was going through a similar journey than what we were. And she messaged me after she listened to a couple of the episodes. She's like I had number one, she had no idea. And number two, she was just like, it made her feel like that she wasn't alone. That was kind of the whole point. You know, you don't want to you don't want to sit there and feel that aloneness because it is isolating as much as they say there's help out there. Oh, my God, do we ever feel isolated holy cow. The it's always that step of being able to pick up that phone and make that call and send that email.

And then a podcast has its own way you're going to them, aren't you?

Exactly, yes. That's you know what this beautifully said, Brad, as far as the spreadsheet and things like that I've that spreadsheets helped a lot of people already working on just improving it more and more son of every other week or whatever, they look at the results of the way the data is laid out. And they're just going I see my kid. And they just feel seen because it's, it's in there. It's their experiences, and it's translating into something for them. And that gives them a lot of hope to sit there and fight on for it because it's not easy. And not all doctors are made equal. Yeah, a lot of the other things that happened with me as well as that the I like even just being an administrator in one of the Facebook groups for ADHD. You sit there and you help out parents and you're just like, every, every time you post something that's helpful, you know, it's directly helping somebody avoid, you know, what we would have gone through. Part of the reason I got into also, working in teaching on swim lessons as well was because I got really frustrated seeing kids that were like going and have, you know, coordination difficulties, especially in water being passed over for lessons. And it's hard enough to get in the swim lesson. But it's even worse when your swim instructor doesn't know how to break something down. And it just leads me to and that's why I got involved with that organization. Yeah, it's also what led me to becoming a board member on the ADHD advocacy Society of BC. Like all these things are that outlet out, go out there and just help and do something.

I love what you're sharing here, Mark and that you're telling me being an advocate and you you're being an addict advocate by sharing your story, being vulnerable and sharing your story. I'm already here today you've shared about how you've had some struggles, your your kids and your wife and you know people in your life, how they've impacted you emotionally and everything else like this. You've used the term like broken, and yet you're taking all those kinds of things. And then you're channeling them to help other people by being an advocate by volunteering and being part of these various boards and things like that, man by doing doing your podcast and telling the story that helps other people tell their story and I got a feeling. You're a pretty good listener as well. Is that a fair thing to say?

You have to be

The theme of our podcast here that we're talking cancer in comedy was cancer to talk about it. You know, serious stuff that happens to us, we were talking about serious stuff here. And the comedy is how we approach things with help and, or with hope and with humor. And by telling stories, which kind of have an attitude towards, okay, this thing's not going to beat me. You know, I am going to have an attitude where you because we choose our attitude, I would do stuff. Has there been any episode or any situation or any story? Through this whole circumstance, you've been dealing with your family, or it just made you smile or struck you funny or just just kind of kitchen just hit you in your funny bone.

So it's one of the things one of the things I really liked doing on the podcast is I will start the podcast off with some sort of funny story that either myself I've gone through or, you know, something's happened with Owen. So for example, I think the podcast got released this morning, but it has to do with, you know, I never thought I would hear my wife say the words. Owen please don't pee on the lightsaber.

Okay, all right. I gotta admit, that's a new one on me too. Yeah

I just like, Okay. I remember when he was two, I think we had an entertainment stand in the front room where our TV was. So you've got your three level entertainment stand, you have the TV above it, that's wall mounted. And I came out of the room and I was only gone for maybe 15 seconds, I come back, and all of a sudden there is my two year old, he's climbed up all three levels, and he's holding on to the TV and I'm like, do I get my phone and take a picture of this? Because no one's gonna believe me. Where do I get them down? Now? I get them down. First. I didn't take the pay. I didn't get my phone because I didn't know what was gonna happen. But you get things like that. And you're just like, Alright, then. But all these kinds of things are the are the really funny things that just that just happened? And And honestly, I'll tell you what I I always try to look on. on the lighter side. When Jeremy when Jeremy passed, the the priests that gave the sermon happened to be a high school friend I hadn't I hadn't seen Alessandro since grade 12. And I'm just like, What are you doing here? And I'm like, why am I? And it just made no sense. It's all these these ridiculous little things that go on.

the absurdity of it all, yeah

I think the other thing too, is that I've, I've nearly exited this world myself, the way that ended up happening was a band jam I had come out of, and I was putting my gear away in the trunk of the car, I was standing there with my friend, I just put my amp in the trunk. And I turned around and I saw Brian, and Brian goes, a plane just crashed over there. And he pointed across the street, a plane literally had just crashed. It's not just the and there was fire and flames and everything and all that. And the the interesting thing was that I mean, that messes you up to begin with the impact that that has on you to look at sort of the lighter side of life realizing that you're, you know, you could go at any moment. And then to see, and then to see family friends pass away from cancers or what have you. Yeah, that just settles in. And it's, it's really, I think, this moment is more a cumulative effect of all these small little things that have just gone on.

You know, there's a lot of folks out there who are dealing with all kinds of stuff, it may be ADHD, it might be autism, might be cancer, or it might be, you know, fear of plane crashes, they knew they were things we've talked about here today. And there's some people who are in those dark places, and they're having a hard time getting now. So what's your word of encouragement or hope to someone that to maybe listen to us to today? What would you say to that person who's kind of in a dark place, and they need a little hope and humor in their life,

a lot of people will say, recognizing that you're in a dark place is sort of the first step that is that can be a very, very hard thing to do. If you're if you're able to do that. And you're able to reach out and talk to somebody, do it but do it with the if you're going to say if you're going to do that, then be open and willing, come to the table and say and lay it out, lay it all out on the table. Don't leave part of it behind. I used to sort of deny my own depression and anxiety. But the fact that I'm comfortable now even saying those words it matters a lot and you want to bring that with you talk to somebody find a professional and find someone who fits and find a professional that is that is neurodiverse and familiar with these things and not just any random person make sure you stick with them. That's what I would say other for one of the other phrases I really like is that the sun that stick and that's and that's it.

That's a good good word for us to leave things on here. The sun always rises and there is hope and so mark of Mark Smeets if people want to find you if they want to find your podcast, We Are The ADHD Family podcast. How can they find you to get get connected with your message?

You can go look on Spotify, iTunes, I Heart Radio, YouTube, Amazon, Google and just Google it up there. You can find me on LinkedIn under my name Mark Smeets. There's various social media things.

reach out and look for the word of hope and humor and being helpful. His name is Mark Smeets and he is the producer of the podcast. We are The ADHD Family, and he's been our guest today here on cancer and comedy with Dr. Brad Miller.